Understanding the Church Age Believer’s Relationship to the Law
Romans 7, Galatians 3:1–5–16
Romans Lesson #076
October 4, 2012
www.deanbibleministries.org
I want to start off briefly telling you about the conference/seminar. I’m not going to go into it in tremendous detail. This seminar was started about five years ago as an academic outreach ministry of the Baptist Bible Seminary which is a GARB, Greater Association of Regular Baptists, school in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. I think I saw a few furrowed brows going, “What is GARB?” The Northern Baptists kicked the Southern Baptists out in the early 1850s because they couldn’t support missionaries or pastors or any kind of ministry by anyone who might have a slave. All the denominations in the US split between the north and the south between the late 1840s and 1860. Gradually over time in the 19th century they tended to merge back. Northern Baptists and Southern Baptists did not.
The Northern Baptist Church basically went liberal, starting in the 1890s in what is known as the fundamentalist/modernist controversy. In the late 1920s and 30s, about every three years or so another group of conservative, and I mean that lower case ‘c’, conservative fundamentalist in the classic sense of the Word, were the ones who believed in the basic infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture, Deity of Christ, virgin birth, miracles, and the literal Second Coming of Christ. Conservatives in the Northern Baptist churches would get fed up with their liberalism and leave. One of the groups that left in the mid-thirties is a group that came to be known as the CBA, Conservative Baptist Association. One of the three men who started that was Dr. Richard Beale, who had a daughter named Betty Beale, who married a man named Bob Thieme.
Another conservative group that split off the Northern Baptists was the Regular Baptists. They became known as the Greater Association of Regular Baptists, GARB. Some of us who worked at Camp Peniel met a few people from the school called the Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music. They were a GARB school. They were as legalistic as Bob Jones. They couldn’t watch TV or go to movies or anything like that. They would come down and work at this Christian camp in Texas with a bunch of grace-oriented Christians and they would just walk around the first couple of weeks with their eyes wide-open. They just couldn’t believe these Christians, who, when they got a night off, would go into town and go to a movie. And they wouldn’t even think there could be anything wrong with it. The GARB students would be pretty much converted to grace by the end of the summer and then they’d have to go back up north and it was a rude awakening for them.
They’re not quite that legalistic any more. Bible Baptist Seminary is an excellent school. The academic dean of the seminary is a classmate of mine from Dallas Seminary, Mike Stallard, who is very committed to dispensationalism. They started this academic study group bringing together top scholars and some pastors who were committed to traditional dispensational theology who meet together on an annual basis to further probe, develop, and understand critical issues within dispensational theology. I went to Clark’s Summit last year; this year they’re meeting at the College of Biblical Studies and next year they’ll be back in Clark’s Summit.
Each year they pick a little bit different topic. This year the topic was on dispensationalism and Biblical preaching. The first session we had yesterday morning had two main presenters: Dr. Rod Decker, who teaches at the school up there, and Dr. Christopher Cone who is now the president of Tyndale Seminary in Fort Worth. Their topics were complementary, although they didn’t agree on every detail. Dr. Decker spoke on preaching in the biblical languages and emphasized the importance of the languages for the pastor. A pastor must know the original languages.
Chris spoke on integrating exegesis and exposition. He subtitled it: Preaching and Teaching for Spiritual Independence. Most of us in this group would have a lot more sympathy for what Chris said. Dr. Decker, although I appreciate a lot of his scholarship, is unfortunately, I believe, like too many great scholars. I know of some academicians who when they’re in a seminary or academic classroom, they are as technical and as detailed in the languages as possible. In a response to a question someone asked Dr. Decker about the use of the original languages in the pulpit, he said, “Well, I’ve been in a pastoral ministry for thirty years and I don’t think I ever referred to Greek or Hebrew in the pulpit more than ten times.” I continue to challenge him on this.
When it came to dealing with the importance of knowing the languages he had many good things in his papers. I thought I would read to you some of the excerpts from it. He had a two and a half page ten point-typeface quote from Martin Luther, who initiated the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Luther, like every other pastor who has a sin nature, did not get everything right. In fact, dear old Martin didn’t get a lot of things right. But he did get two things right. One was sola scriptura, the Scripture alone and sola fide, by faith alone. Those were the Latin terms that were two of the five phrases that became sort of the marching banners for the Protestant Reformation.
At this time Luther is moving away from Roman Catholicism and he had been an Augustinian monk before he came to an understanding of the gospel in his study of Romans so he doesn’t move very far but he moves far enough to understand the line between the gospel of grace. He is so embattled over just this one doctrine of justification by faith alone he doesn’t have time to explore all of the other doctrines of Scripture that gradually developed over the next century. He said some important things about the preparation of a pastor.
Luther said, “In proportion as we value the gospel let us zealously hold to the languages.” That needs to be emblazoned over the door of every seminary in the world today because somehow they fail to understand how that really relates to what you do and say in the pulpit. He says, “Let us zealously hold to the languages for it was not without purpose that God caused His Scriptures to be set down in these two languages alone. The Old Testament in Hebrew; the New Testament in Greek.
Now if God did not despise them but chose them above all others for His word, then we ought, too, to honor them above all others.” What a great statement. The Bible wasn’t written in Hebrew and Greek “just because it just happened that way.” God oversees the project. There was a reason for that. God chose Hebrew and Greek to be the vessels used as the best vehicle to communicate the content that’s in those two testaments. When God considered it important to communicate in those two languages, then we should honor that and should know that.
There’s just a footnote in our country that up until the late 1800s it would be typical that in a congregation the size of ours on a Sunday morning, there would be at least eight or ten men in the congregation who could follow along in the Greek text because Greek and Hebrew and Latin were all taught in the classroom so they grew up studying these languages so they could read it. Today we do well if we can find a pastor in this computer age who can deal with Greek, much less Hebrew.
“Nevertheless,” Luther goes on, “we shall be sure of this, we shall not long preserve the gospel without the languages.” What a profound insight. “The languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is contained. They are the casket in which this jewel is enshrined. If through our neglect, we let the languages go which, God forbid, we shall not only lose the gospel but the time will come when we will be unable to either speak, write, or correct Latin, German or even the English.
Then you say, ‘but many of the fathers became teachers without the languages. That is true. But how do you account for the fact they so often erred in the Scriptures? How often does not St. Augustine err in the Psalms and his other expositions and all those who have undertaken to expound Scripture without a knowledge of the languages? Even though what they said about a subject at times was perfectly true, they were never quite sure if it was really present there in the text whereby their interpretation they sought to find. When our faith is thus held up to ridicule, where does the fault lie? It lies in our ignorance of the languages and there’s no other way out than to learn the languages.”
He goes on to say later on, “A simple preacher, it is true, has so many passages and texts available through translations that he can know and teach Christ, lead a holy life, and preach to others.” But when it comes to interpreting Scripture and working with it on your own, disputing with those who incite it incorrectly [and that should go to every single pastor who thinks he can go far without the languages.] he is lost. What Luther is saying here is that you may be able to get so far without the languages but when it comes to interpreting Scripture, working with it on your own, or disputing with those who recite it incorrectly he is unequal to the task.
“That cannot be done without the languages. Since it becomes Christians to make holy use of the Scriptures as their one and only book, it is a sin and a shame not to know our own book and to understand the speech and words of our God. It is still a greater sin and loss that we do not study languages, especially in these days when God is offering us and given us books and every inducement to this study”. This was in 1520 or so. They didn’t have computers. They had just discovered the printing press about fifty or sixty years earlier so because of that they had just had books and tools to study. He’s not talking about Logos and Concordance and Bible Works and all those other tools today so get that out of your head.
We live in an age that’s gone way beyond that and yet, the more that’s available to us, the less we emphasize it and the less that we use. He goes on to say, “The teacher or preacher can expound the Bible from beginning to end as he pleases, accurately or inaccurately, if there is no one there in the congregation to judge whether he is doing it right or wrong. But in order to judge, one must have a knowledge of the languages that cannot be done in any other way. Therefore, although faith in the gospel may indeed be proclaimed by simple preachers without a knowledge of languages such preaching is flat and plain. People finally become bored with it and it falls to the ground but where the preacher is versed in the languages there is freshness and vigor in his preaching. Scripture can be treated in its entirety and faith finds itself constantly renewed by a continual variety of words and illustrations. Hence, there is great danger of speaking of God in a different manner and different terms than God Himself employs. In short, they may lead saintly lives and teach sacred things among themselves but so long as they remain without the languages, they cannot but lack what all the rest lack, and to be useful to other nations. Because they can do this but will not, they have to figure out for themselves how they will answer for it to God.” Good words from 500 years ago.
Let’s get into our study in Romans tonight. There’s no slide presentation with it. I want to take you to some passages where I ended last time to understand the relationship of the Christian to the Law. At the seminar today, this morning, we had a session on hermeneutics as it applies to the Old Testament and the New Testament. The three speakers were Joe Perle, the academic dean at the College of Biblical Studies. He did a good job but he was up against two oldie, moldie, goldies: Bob Thomas, who’s the best, and Elliott Johnson, who’s just half a one thousand point decimal point of Bob Thomas because he’s younger.
When we introduced ourselves to the panel, I was going to start off saying that compared to the other guys on the panel, I was older than dirt. But considering that Elliott was there, I was the dirt but he was older than me because he was my professor. Elliott Johnson is the hermeneutics expert at Dallas Seminary whereas Bob Thomas, before he retired, was the hermeneutics guy at Master Seminary. They have different perspectives and they don’t always agree. I’m not always sure what the difference is because they’re slicing the baloney very, very thin but it’s significant.
Sometimes it’s not always as clear and I really appreciated some things that Elliott had in his paper, not that I didn’t appreciate Bob Thomas’s paper which was excellent, but Elliott was dealing with a number of passages like Romans 6:15 and Romans 7 and Galatians 3, which are passages we’re in right now. So he was scratching where I was itching. He had some interesting things to say which I’ll read as we go through these passages.
In Romans 7 Paul is talking about the fact that we are dead to the Law. Not that the Law is dead but that we are dead to the Law. In other words, the Law no longer has power or authority over us. This is so foundational for us to understand that I hope you understand how important it is to get to this. This isn’t just abstract doctrine. When you go to many, if not most, churches in this country, the pastors do not know how to distinguish between Old Testament and New Testament teaching to begin with.
Beyond that they don’t understand what has really happened in terms of the Cross and the baptism by the Holy Spirit. They may understand it to a degree but as I pointed out in our last few lessons what Paul says in Romans 6:14 and 15, “sin shall not have dominion over us because we’re dead to the sin nature.” It’s still alive; it’s still there. But we’re dead to the sin nature. That’s Romans 6. Romans 7 says we’re dead to the Law. That’s why we have a problem with legalists on the one hand and people who are licentious on the other hand. But he’s making the statement that sin shall not have dominion over us because we’re not under Law, we’re under grace.
As I pointed out when we hit that passage a couple of weeks ago, what he is saying is that there has been a dispensational shift. There has been a change in the way God relates to human beings because of what happened at the Cross. Because of what happened at the Cross, there is something radically different that happened to believers since the Day of Pentecost. It happened to the Church Age believer but never happened to anybody before that Day of Pentecost.
On the day we believe Jesus died for our sins, at that instant, God the Son uses God the Holy Spirit to cleanse us, to identify us positionally with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. We call that doctrine positional truth which means we’re dead to the sin nature. Because of that we’re free from the power and dominion of the sin nature. That’s Romans 6. That never happened before AD 33. Never! David didn’t have that happen to him. Saul in the Old Testament, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Abraham, Moses. Name your hero. None of them had that happen to him.
So the lesson we get from the Old Testament is that the Law really doesn’t work. Israel is under the Law, but what happens? Failure after failure after failure. There are a few bright lights. There are times when they step up to the plate and they go above and beyond their fallen natures. That’s why they’re heroes. That’s why they’re listed in Hebrews 11.
I want to talk a minute about heroes. I’ve been reflecting on this the last few weeks because of one sentence I heard on a talk radio show that I think it was accurate. We live in a era since the fifties and sixties where a certain segment of our intelligentsia and academicians have been in full mode to destroy American heroes, to assault the founding fathers and attack them. This is to be expected from a liberal. Why?
Because as Thomas Sowell so clearly points out in his book Conflict of Vision, ultimately what makes a difference between the person who looks at the world and comes to liberal conclusions and a person who looks at the world and comes to conservative conclusions is that the liberal thinks that man is basically good and improvable. Conservatives believe that man is basically evil, not that he can’t do good things but that his nature is basically evil and so he needs to be controlled. Even government must be controlled by law; otherwise evil will have its day. Either the people will become evil or the government will become evil, but law is what controls evil and controls the sin nature.
Now if you’re a liberal and you believe everybody is basically good then you’re going to look at Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or Benjamin Franklin or any human hero and you’re going to say, “They’re not all that heroic. Look at all the things they did that were wrong. Look at the sins in their life. Look at their moral failures.” You just tear them down because your assumption is that everyone is basically good and they did bad things so how can you say they’re a hero? The reason they’re a hero is because they’re a corrupt fallen sinner and they had moments when they rose above their nature and they lived and operated above their sin nature. That’s what made them heroes. They didn’t stay there the whole time.
You look at those heroes in Hebrews 11. Those men that are listed there all had tremendous spiritual failings. Every single one of them from Abraham to Moses to Isaac to Joseph, all the way through to Gideon and Jephthah and the judges and David; they all had great moral failures. That’s to be expected. They were fallen sinners and we know from Romans 6 that they didn’t have a sin nature whose power was broken by the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. So it’s just amazing they rose to the level they did but they rose above their natural sin nature inclination and they did what God wanted them to do. They obeyed God. Maybe they did it just for a moment, just for a day, just for a week, but there was an instant or more when they were above their nature. That’s what made them heroes.
Heroes are people who rise above their natural sinful inclinations. It may not be a lot but that’s what’s heroic. When everyone just goes along and does what their sin nature leads them to do then they’re just being normal. When the Founding Fathers or any other great hero in American history failed, that’s only to be expected because they were fallen sinners. What’s not expected is for them to rise to the level of the heroics of the Founding Fathers or the great military leaders we had or the great civic leaders that we had in the our history. That was exceptional. That’s what makes a person a hero.
What we see here in Romans is that we have to recognize the fact that we’re sinners. You’re married to a sinner. Whether I’m talking to the wife or the husband, that person you love is a lousy, corrupt sinner, and you need to be realistic about that. They’re going to fail and fail miserably; sometimes or many times, depending on the person. That’s what you should expect not in a way that excuses it but that they’re just a sinner, just like you. Guess what? You’re going to fail too. Many times.
The grace of God is that many times we won’t fail; maybe because of the Word of God and maybe there’ll be a few times of significant failure. That’s the reality. That’s why we have to forgive one another in marriage because that other person is not any better or worse than we are. Their sin, whatever it is, their failures in the marriage, whatever it may be, and we all have them, on either side, is just to be expected by a sinner. What’s exceptional is that we rise above that because we love that person. That’s what makes it significant.
We can do that in the Church Age because of what happened at salvation when we’re identified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. That’s revolutionary. That had never happened in 4,000 years of human history. All of a sudden on the Day of Pentecost and from that day to now the power and dominion and tyranny of their sin nature is ended. If it operates fully in our lives its because we choose to let it happen. It’s only because you choose to let it happen and I choose to let it happen. It’s our responsibility. We put ourselves back under that tyranny but that tyranny is broken for the first time in human history. That is mind boggling.
The Law never handled it. The Mosaic Law was a complete failure. Look at what it produced in terms of the history of Israel, the bondage, and the failures. There had to be something different and what’s different is the shift from Law to grace. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t grace in the Old Testament. It doesn’t mean there aren’t mandates, ethical, moral absolutes, in the New Testament. But now, as Elliott pointed out today, we’re going to emphasize truth with grace. Because we recognize we’re all fallen and we have to deal with each other in grace. That’s what makes for successful relationships in any area because we deal with one another in grace and humility.
In this early transitional period, in the early part of the Church Age, especially the Jewish believers were wrestling with the whole idea of what is the role of the Mosaic Law to believers. Last time we looked at Acts 15 in terms of the Jerusalem Council and there I pointed out that the issue there wasn’t just the issue of whether or not male Gentile believers should be circumcised but really the whole issue of the role of the Law in their life. As the apostles met and worked through the issues, understanding God’s call to Peter to take the gospel to the Gentiles and how God had used Paul and Barnabas in their first missionary journey to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, they realized there was no longer an obligation to the Mosaic Law placed upon believers in the Church Age.
However, there were problems of offending Jews because of their belief in the Law. This is what we see in that Acts 15 passage as one example of many of how the more mature brother should be sensitive and aware of problems with a weaker brother. That’s all that is. I read the issues last week where they should avoid eating meat sacrificed to idols and adultery and immorality. Why? Because that offended the Jews. Not because it was not spiritual and not because they couldn’t grow and mature if they did those things but so they would not offend the Jews.
That’s the basic argument that’s there: that the Law as a rule of life, as the basis for any sanctification, had ended so neither Jew nor Greek was under it any more. However, the moral laws, the eternal spiritual laws, that the Mosaic Law reflected were still in effect. Now from there I want to look at a second important passage in the New Testament dealing with the relationship of the Law and that’s in Galatians. Galatians is between 2 Corinthians and Ephesians. Galatians is the first epistle that Paul wrote. It is one of my favorite epistles because of the simplicity of it, the way it’s laid out.
The first few chapters focus on the fact they distorted grace in the gospel. The remaining chapters deal with the fact they distorted grace in sanctification. In the first chapter Paul doesn’t mince words. He just basically assaults them very strongly, telling them that they deserted the gospel of the grace of Christ for a different kind of gospel, not the one he preached, but one that was taught by the Judiazers. “It’s okay to believe in Jesus as Messiah but He’s not enough. You also have to follow the precepts of the Law,” the Judaizers said. It was grace plus something. Whenever you add anything to grace, you destroy grace. It was another gospel, not the same kind of gospel.
It’s a HETEROS gospel, a gospel of a different kind. That’s how we get the word heterosexual. You have a relationship with someone who is a different sex. Not a homosexual, who is someone of the same sex. So you have two different Greek words for’ other’, HETEROS, which is means another of a different kind and ALLOS, which is someone of the same kind. So they desert to a different kind of gospel.
The issues in chapters one and two really relates to grace and the gospel of justification by faith alone. That’s why you have the great passages like Colossians 2:16, “Knowing that because a man is not justified by works of the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the Law.” Notice how he completely juxtaposes faith in Christ with the works of the Law. Works of the Law cannot get you the kind of righteousness that He requires. He expands on all of this in Romans 3 and 4. He goes on to say in verse 20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live ...”
See that relates to Romans 6. He’s making a transition here at the end of chapter 2 to talking about sanctification. He says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live...” What does he mean? Does he have a multiple personality syndrome? No, what he means by that is that the old man is dead. It’s not me, the unregenerate person I once was who lives but Christ who lives in me. We have been identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, that power of the sin nature is broken, I’m a new creature in Christ so that I live on the basis of this new empowerment. Christ lives in us. The Holy Spirit lives in us.
He now says, “The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith.” See, the spiritual life is still by grace, through faith. It’s not by works. Does that mean there aren’t things we have to do? There aren’t mandates to follow? No, but we follow those mandates by faith. God said, “Do this.” I say, “I believe it so I’m going to do it.” We fulfill the mandate by faith; it’s not legalism. It’s only legalism if you think that’s what gets you credit with God or if you think you can lose your salvation if you don’t do it or something like that.
Paul says, “The life I live in the flesh [he means in this corporeal body] I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God for if righteousness comes through the Law then Christ died in vain.” Righteousness doesn’t come through the Law either as justification righteousness, that is, imputed righteousness, or experiential righteousness. It doesn’t come through the Law.
Then he changes his focus in Galatians 3. Chapters 3–6 focuses on the spiritual life, and it’s fabulous how he focuses our attention on this. Look at Galatians 3: 2. He says, “The only thing I want to learn from you is, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith?” Based on what he just said in chapters one and two, we received the Spirit, not because of what we did, not from following the Law, not through the ritual, but by faith alone in Christ alone. That’s how we received the Spirit. Then he says in verse 3, “Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit [at regeneration when we’re identified with Christ in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and as a result we’re indwelt by the Spirit, the Son, and the Father] are you now being completed or matured by the flesh?” You got saved by faith, do you grow by the Law? No.
What’s important about this question is [and you should circle these words ‘Spirit’ ‘perfect’ ‘flesh’]. The next time these words show up is in Galatians 5:16. Everything between this verse and Galatians 5:16—which says “we are to walk by means of the Spirit and you will not fulfill [perfect] the works of the flesh [the sin nature]—is to help us understand what he says in Galatians 5:16. Talk about an anacoluthon, “going down a rabbit trail”. That’s a three-chapter “rabbit trail”.
It’s important to understand what he says so we can understand the command to ‘walk by means of the Spirit’. If you just go out and start saying, “I’ve got to walk by means of the Spirit”, you’re going to fall flat on your face because we have to understand all these things that are going on. The most important thing to understand is what he says in verse 3 as the starting point which has to do with the purpose of the Law and how it functions in our life. He goes on to say, “Have you suffered so many things in vain?” In other words, was it in vain? They’ve had opposition because they became Christians and if you’re just going to opt for the Law then you went through all of that for no reason whatsoever.
He says in verse 5, “Therefore, He who supplies the Spirit to you...” Who’s that? That’s the Father who sent the Spirit. And it’s Jesus who sent the Spirit. “... and works miracles among you, did He do it by works of the Law or by the hearing of faith?” If it’s the works of the Law, then how you grow up as a Christian is really different. If it’s by faith then it’s different from anything that’s preceded it in history. You can understand why they might have been a little confused. “Since Adam fell, we haven’t done it this way before. It’s a new way,” they say. It’s a new dispensation. For the first time in history their sins have been paid for. He says the comparison is, one familiar to you if you’ve sat in this Romans class for long, “...Just as Abraham believed God and it was accounted and imputed to him for righteousness.” That’s a quote from Genesis 15:6.
This verse simply refers back to Abram’s original trust in God for salvation. He simply believed the promise of God and God imputed the righteousness of Christ to him on the basis of faith alone. So Abraham becomes foundational here. Abraham is the first Jew; he is the head of the Jewish race and he becomes the covenant partner with God in what is known as the Abrahamic covenant. God said, “Through you, Abraham, I will bless all nations.” That’s the promise. Remember that, because we’re going to hear that word ‘promise’ about six or seven more times before we finish this chapter.
It all relates to inheriting the promise of Abraham. Here’s the issue: do we as Gentiles have the inheritance as physical descendants from Abraham? No. We’re not physical descendants of Abraham. But we are heirs of the promise in this passage. How do we become heirs of the promise? Paul says the promise was given to Abraham and his seed. And he says that the fact the word ‘seed’ is in the singular means it’s referring to Jesus. When we enter into Christ through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, we become heirs of the promise to Abraham, not by our physical relation to Abraham but by our spiritual relation through our position in Christ.
Paul is going to end this chapter talking about the Baptism by the Holy Spirit. God has a plan that’s consistent in every one of these books. Isn’t it incredible how it all comes together? But if we don’t immerse ourselves in the Scripture, then it doesn’t show up. This is one of the things Elliott brought up today which I thought was very insightful, just adding a few little things together, he said, “In the Gospels the Lord applies promises from the Law to Himself, but not to the disciples.” Wow, that’s good. That’s what teaching at Dallas Seminary for fifty years will get you. You see things.
He says, “Now Paul in Galatians 3:6–29 illustrates how two different promises can be applied to believers whether Jew or Gentile. The promises belong to Israel. Romans 9:4, right? Paul says, “The covenants belong to Israel.” They don’t belong to the Gentiles. So how do we get them? That’s the issue. The promises belong to Israel because they’re addressed to Israel in Genesis but they’re applied through and in the Israelite, the seed, through Jesus Christ. Elliott went on to say, “The first is a series of promises addressed historically to Abraham in Genesis 12:2–3. One is a promise to bless Abraham and a second is a promise to bless Gentiles through Abraham.”
Turn to Galatians 3:8. Elliott says, “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify [in the indicative mood in the Greek] which says that seeing God justifies the Gentiles by faith ...[see, it’s that continuous action] God justifies the Gentiles by faith, preaches the gospel to Abraham beforehand.” Now did God tell Abraham that Jesus, the son of Mary, is going to be crucified on a cross called Golgotha right outside Jerusalem which is right on Mount Moriah where later on you’re going to sacrifice Isaac? And by believing in that substitutionary death of Christ on the Cross you’re going to have eternal life? Did He tell that to Abraham? No, He didn’t give all that but what Abraham understood was that man has a basic problem because he’s a sinner and God, and only God, can solve that problem so I have to trust Him through His promise. More details will be added later. Stay tuned. Film at eleven.
So what was the good news that came to Abraham in the context of Genesis 12? Think about it. Through you, I’m going to bless all the nations. That was the good news. I’m going to bless you and through you, I’m going to bless all the nations. That’s the gospel, the good news. So Elliott writes that there are three things to note: first, that Abraham believed God and was blessed as his faith was credited to him as righteousness; second, the promise extends to all nations through you [Genesis 12:3]; the ambiguity of ‘through you’ at least means through Abraham. But those addressed directly through Abraham were limited. He was about maybe 70 years old at this time and he lived about another 100 years so there were just a finite number of people he could personally bless. That’s what he’s saying there.
Isaac was blessed through Abraham’s faith (Genesis 22:1–19) and those who read about Abraham’s case and followed his faith are blessed as Abraham’s son—Galatians 3:7, which reads, “Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.” Elliott then says, “Third, it is then clear that all nations were not influenced directly through Abraham. That awaited Abraham’s descendant, Jesus Christ, who would ultimately provide redemption, through which blessings are ultimately available to the Gentiles. While Christ is the basis for blessing all nations, ultimately Israel will also be the messenger through whom all nations will hear. [Revelation 7:3 and 14:4–6 which refers to the 144,000].
So let’s look at what the text says, “For seeing that God would justify or would declare the Gentiles to be just before God, proclaimed the gospel to Abraham beforehand saying ‘in you all nations will be blessed’” That’s the gospel as Abraham understood as its stated in the context. “So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.” That would be Jew and Gentile.
Verse 10, “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse [that is, those who think they get righteousness from the Law are under the curse] ... for it is written, ‘cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them’.” [Deuteronomy 27:26]. Then Paul says, “But that no one is justified by the Law in the sight of God is evident...” He then quotes from Habakkuk 2:4, just as Paul did in the beginning of Romans, “For the Scripture says the just shall live by faith.” ‘To live by faith’ deals with post-salvation spiritual growth.
Then in verse 13 he says, “Christ has redeemed us [purchased us, bought us so we are no longer in the slave market of sin, under the curse of the Law.]” How did Christ redeem us? By becoming a curse for us. And again Paul quotes from the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 21:33, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”
What we learn here is that freedom isn’t free. Somebody has to pay. Always. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. When the Federal government gives money to anybody, it has to take that from somebody who worked for it. And somebody who earned it. Somebody always has to pay. There’s no such thing as free money. The government can’t just sit up there and print money because they’re in charge of the treasury [hello, Mr. Bernanke]. There’s got to be some value there. Verse 14 says, “That the blessing of Abraham...[so the purpose for Christ becoming a curse on the cross is so the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles]...in Christ Jesus.”
No one got in Christ Jesus before the day of Pentecost, before AD 33. It only comes when you’re baptized by means of the Holy Spirit, identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, and placed in Christ. “The blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus that we [Church Age believers] might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” I don’t recall the Spirit being mentioned in Genesis 12. But it’s the blessing by Abraham but not because we’re in Abraham but because we’re in Christ. So we receive that promise because we’re in Christ, not because we’re physically related to Abraham.
Verse 15, “Brethren, I speak in a manner of men, [I’m telling you this in terms of human language] though it is only a man’s covenant, yet if it is confirmed no one annuls it.” He’s saying that when you enter into a contract with anyone else, once the contract for your credit card, your mortgage, whatever is signed, you can’t go in and change it. “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made.” He does not say seeds, but seed.
This is one of those verses that emphasize verbal inspiration extends down to the very letters, plural versus singular. Paul is making a major doctrinal point on the fact that the word ‘seed’ in Genesis is singular and not plural. That’s how inerrancy extends to the minutia. So we participate in the blessing, not because of our relationship to Abraham but because we’re in Jesus, the Seed.
He says, “And this I say that the Law, which was 430 years later ...” See all these promises were made to Abraham out of grace. Law doesn’t come along for another 430 years so how can Abraham’s salvation or the promises made to him have anything to do with the Law? These precede the Law by four and one half centuries. “... the Law which was 430 years later cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ.” Interesting. The Abrahamic covenant is confirmed by God in Christ. “...that it should make the promise of no effect.” So the covenant that comes later can’t nullify the earlier covenant. It’s still in effect. It’s an eternal covenant.
Then, Paul says, “For if an inheritance comes from the Law it’s no longer a promise but God gave it to Abraham by promise. What purpose then does the Law serve? It was added because of transgressions.” Notice he says that the Law was not added to get you to heaven or to get you spiritually mature. It was added because you were dirty, lousy, rotten, corrupt sinners and you needed a Law to control your sin. And to make it clear to you that you couldn’t be perfect.
“It was added because of sin until the seed [Christ] should come and to whom the promise was made. And it [The Law] was appointed through the angels by the hand of a mediator. Exodus 20 tells you nothing about angels being up there on Mount Sinai but this passage does. “Now a mediator does not mediate for one only because God is one. Is the Law then against the promise of God? Certainly not. For if there could have been a Law given that could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the Law. But Scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” The promise comes to us by faith and that promise is the promise of blessing to Abraham which relates to the inheritance.
We don’t get it. It’s not a physical inheritance for us because we’re not related to the physical seed. It’s a spiritual inheritance. And he says, “But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the Law, which would afterwards be revealed. Therefore the Law was our tutor...” The Greek is pedagogue. A pedagogue is a slave hired to train a young child until he reached maturity at age thirteen or fourteen in Greek culture. And then he was to be treated like an adult. In Hebrew culture he was bar mitzvahed and then he became a child of the covenant. Mama couldn’t scold him anymore like a boy. He had to be treated like an adult. He could not be disciplined the same way as he could have as a child, ‘but as an adolescent if he mouthed off at his mother too much, he could be taken out in the square and stoned.
So the Law is compared to that temporary period before maturity. After faith has come, the tutor function no longer exists, Paul says, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus and heirs according to the promise.”
But that inheritance doesn’t come by physical relation to Abraham but by being spiritually placed in Christ by the Baptism by the Holy Spirit, which is what verse 28 is talking about. That takes us right back to Colossians 2:11 and Romans 6:1–4, the foundation for the spiritual life. Then Paul goes on to talk about other things in chapters four and five but chapter three is what tells us about the believer’s relationship to the Law.
Next time we’re going to look at Galatians 5:18 and 6:14 and connect those together. This is fantastic stuff because it leads up to that great statement that Paul gives in Galatians 5:1 because this is the foundation of our freedom in Christ. Not freedom to do whatever we want to do but because of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the death of the tyranny of the sin nature, we have what nobody else in history had and that is the freedom to live apart from the sin nature and to truly serve God. That’s the point of freedom.